Do you want the ability to add new profile fields when users register on your WordPress site?
Maybe you want to allow users to submit their social media profiles. Or you might want to have them submit their business phone number when registering. This can all be done by adding additional profile fields.
In this article, we will show how to add additional user profile fields in WordPress registration.
Method 1. Add Custom User Profile Fields using Advanced Custom Fields Plugin
The best way to add extra user profile fields in WordPress is to use the Advanced Custom Fields plugin.
First, you need to install and activate the Advanced Custom Fields plugin. For more details, see our step by step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.
After you’ve installed and activated it, go to Custom Fields » Add New and give your new field a name.
We’re calling this example ‘Twitter Handle’ since we’re setting up a custom field to add a Twitter username. However, you can name it anything you want.
Next, click the ‘Add Field’ button, and you’ll see it open up to configure your new field. Here’s our example customization.
The ‘Field Label’ is the name of your field, which helps you organize your fields.
The ‘Field Name’ is auto-populated based on the name you give your field, but you can change this to be whatever you want.
The ‘Field Type’ is where you can select what type of information you want to be submitted.
You can choose many options such as email, number, text area, url, password, and more.
The ‘Required?’ area can be turned on or off. If you want to require anyone who registers to fill out this field, then you’ll need to toggle the required button to where it says ‘Yes.’
Lastly, the ‘Placeholder Text’ is what you’ll put in the field to show as an example for your users when they register. We used ‘@sample_username.’
The next step is to set the location for this profile field.
You’ll need to scroll down to the ‘Location’ area and make sure you select ‘User Role’ in the dropdown menu.
To the very right, the ‘All’ option simply means all users who register.
But if you wanted to make this rule only apply to certain user roles such as Administrator, Editor, Author, Contributor, or Subscriber, then you can make that selection there.
Next, scroll down to the settings box. Make sure the ‘Active’ field is set to ‘Yes’ and then click ‘Publish’ in the upper right corner to save this field.
In the Style section, make sure you select ‘Seamless (no metabox)’ to prevent the name of this field appearing on your registration page.
Since we’ve already given instructions to submit the Twitter handle, you don’t want it appearing multiple times in the field as it makes it look cluttered.
Lastly, you can see all your fields by going to Custom Fields » Field Groups.
Now it’s time to check out how this is displayed on your registration page. The default url for registration is located at ‘yoursite.com/wp-login.php?action=register.’
Our example looks like this:
If you’d like to create a custom user registration form in WordPress, then you can do so by using the WPForms plugin and following our tutorial on how to create a custom user registration form in WordPress.
Method 2. Add Additional User Profile Fields with Profile Extra Fields
This method allows you to easily add extra fields to user profiles and user registration form in WordPress. It is a little less flexible, but it gets the job done.
First, you need to install and activate the Profile Extra Fields plugin. If you’re unsure of how to do this, check out our full guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.
Once the plugin is activated, it’s time to create some additional user profile fields to use on your registration forms.
We’re going to create a phone number field as an example, but you can create as many of these fields as you want.
First, go to your Profile Extra Fields » Add New page. We’re creating a field for users to submit their phone number.
You’ll see that we’ve named the field ‘Phone Number’ and selected ‘Phone number’ in the dropdown menu.
In the Field Properties, we’re checking all the boxes for the ‘Author’ user level because we want to display this field when someone registers as an Author.
Lastly, check the box to make the field required if you want them to fill out their phone number when registering.
Scroll down until you’ll this:
Make sure that box is checked so the field shows in your registration form. Don’t forget to click the ‘Save Changes’ button at the bottom before going further.
When you create these fields, you can see them when you go to your Profile Extra Fields » Add New page:
Now, you’ll want to go into your WordPress dashboard to change some settings for new registrations.
Go to Settings » General page in your WordPress admin area and then check the membership box so anyone can register.
You will need to make sure that the default role is set to the role which you have added extra fields for.
This way, you can control the level of access new users have, and this will force the registration form to show the fields you selected earlier in this tutorial.
Here’s what the default registration form looks like:
Pro Tip: You can always create a custom WordPress user registration form by following our tutorial.
We’re using ‘AuthorJon’ as a test profile to show you how this new user registration will show up in the dashboard.
To see the extra fields in action, go to Users » All Users and then click on ‘edit’ for the profile you want to see.
We are looking at the user we just created, AuthorJon. When you scroll to the bottom of their profile, you’ll see the following:
As you can see, their phone number was created in their profile when they registered their account. This goes for any other field you want to use as well.
We hope this tutorial helped you learn how to add additional user profile fields in WordPress registration. You might also want to see our guide on how to create a custom WordPress login page, and our comparison of the best WordPress membership plugins to create & sell courses.
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I am looking for a free question and answer plugin that can add additional information to the user profile.
Such as weight, height and preferences.
Thank you!
Need some advice here….how can I export the custom user registration fields into an excel sheet or something like that? I.e. if users say “how they heard about us”, how can I go back and view that information for a large number of users without having to individually go into each user profile?
Thank you very much for any help!
-Jon
Hi everyone, i like to build stuff for WP without using external plugins, so i build my own. I sucesfully added social media fields to all users > user profile form.
But i’ve stuck in adding dropdown menu for country.
Is there any WooCommerce specialist here?
There is dropdown functionality inside class-wc-countries.php file, and i’am dying to add the same dropdown menu in registration form and on user profile form.
Of course this is taken for woocommerce, but how to extract this code to work with WC deactivated ?
Sorry for my poor English.
great plugin, but how do i get the extra field to display in the author.php
This is a great plugin!
However, I’ve probably found a bug.
I’m using WP 4.1.2 with Cimy User Extra Fields, but uploaded files are not showing up in the user’s profile and fields.
Note: I can only upload files in the backend of WP.
Who has the solution? Or is there a better and fully working alternative?
Thank You!
If you think you have found a bug in the plugin, then please reach out to plugin authors using the support tab on the plugin website.
I have follow all tutorial and prepare data for country, region/province & city. But I don’t how to make it selectable from dropdown list.
Any sugestion how to solve this?
Thanks
And how can I check (either with php or js) if certain user matched following option in his profile? (I want to display info regarding of matched on/off option)
I just found this tutorial and it really save me lots of time for my new project. I used Oi Frontend Profile to enable users to update their profile details including the fileds created by Cimy User Extra Fileds (CUEF) on frontend. It works until one of my user complaining that once he click update profile, the fields created by CUEF is gone and not updated. Only default WP fields is updated.
I looked around and found other developer with the same issue here: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/11874083/wordpress-edit-user-and-cimy-user-extra-fields. He found a way to fix the bug by adding “cimy_uef_” to the front of fields name. I just dont understand what he meant by adding “cimy_uef_” to the front of fileds name. Where/how should I add “cimy_uef_” to fix this? Please help. Thanks.
i have just added a new custom field but how do i make it as required?
I guess uncheck the “Can be empty” checkbox will make it required.
Yes this plugin is so good and easy to use. But I do not understand how to show an extra-field in a page. Have any short code? Can anyone help me?
get_cimyFieldValue($curauth->ID, ‘value’
This plugin is the worst user friendly plugin ever
Would love to see your review in the WordPress.org repository. Please highlight specific issues and perhaps give pointers, so the plugin author can improve the issues. Simply saying it is worst user friendly plugin ever doesn’t really help anyone
From what I’ve seen the plugin author doesn’t respond well to criticism or help requests…
The documentation needs a lot of work, but the plugin itself is largely quite functional. In the end I had to come up with a slightly hacky javascript solution to apply a placeholder attribute to fields generated by the plugin, but it did what I needed.
Lol, i didnt have time, anyways here is a better plugin than cimy and does the same thing.
http://wordpress.org/plugins/register-plus-redux/
Do a review on it.
Thanks for it, wonderful article.
Great article, very helpful! Do you know if it’s possible to add the HTML5 placeholder attribute to text fields generated by this plugin?
No entirely sure. Please contact the plugin developer for that.
Great article, thank you!
If besides extra user fields, you’re looking also for front-end login, registration and edit profile functionality, then Profile Builder may be an alternative worth looking into: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/profile-builder/
Thanks for another great post! This is the most valuable page I follow!
Thanks for the great plugin info. I hope you won”t be recommending Code Canyon / Envato – premium plugins. I’ve just had the nasty experience of purchasing one of their products. Before getting to download it the developer took it down & Envato told me that I had to deal with the developer who never answered my email. Envato does not stand by it’s customers despite collecting 50% of purchase fees! Wow. That was money down the drain.